


their far horizon

by anabel



Series: some fragment of a song [3]
Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate POV, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:49:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28236456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/pseuds/anabel
Summary: After all these years, it was as simple as this: he loved her.
Relationships: Anne Elliot/Frederick Wentworth
Series: some fragment of a song [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088135
Comments: 11
Kudos: 148
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	their far horizon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [troubleinmind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/troubleinmind/gifts).



> Dear troubleinmind:
> 
> I loved all your prompts! I also want nothing more than all the Frederick/Anne happiness. ♥ And your suggestion of a Frederick-POV fic was really fun to write. I hope you enjoy this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it for you! 
> 
> Love, your author

After all these years, it was as simple as this: he loved her.

Frederick had tried for some time to complicate matters. He had come ashore determined to wed, yes, but determined to wed any maid save one; be she pretty, complaisant, and pleasant, and inclined to a sailing life, he was willing to place his life and laurels in her hands. Save only the one – and it was hardly likely that _they_ should ever meet again, England being a rather larger place than the deck of a ship at sea, and filled with more women in one town than a sailor saw in a year. He need hardly even think the name Kellynch Hall, and as for coming within a day’s journey of it, he laughed at the prospect.

Yet fate and his sister Sophia had other plans.

 _Dear brother_ , she wrote, _The Admiral and I have found the most congenial port imaginable. I believe you stayed nearby with Edward before his marriage, so you must remember its virtues. Come and bide with us a while, and let me remember what you look like. We shall trade our war stories and I shall beat you at the card table as I was always used to do, and if you are still intent on tying up you may find any number of eligible young women hereabouts. Some may even take that choosy fancy of yours._

He turned the letter over in his hand, gazing with some bemusement at the blotted address. Kellynch Hall indeed, he had not read it awry. Surely – surely this could not be simple happenstance. It beggared belief. Sophia there, where he had wooed _her_ , whose name even now he could not think without a bitter pang? Sophia mistress of the gardens he had strolled through, the roses he had presented for _her_ bosom, the trees he had pressed _her_ against and stolen a kiss in his youthful ardour? 

No. Sophia was playing the mother, as she had at times after the early loss of their parents. She had heard the story somehow – how, he could not quite make out, unless Edward had played him false – and having once heard it, she had decided upon this course. 

Yet – and in this moment, his sail snapped in a sudden wind. If Sophia had charted this course, she had not idly done so. A course set for Kellynch Hall could have only one guiding star, tidings which he had resolutely taken care not to seek out all these years:

Anne Elliot was not married.

There. He could say her name. He was no green boy, no callow heartbroken youth. He had been blooded in battle, had won his command and brought his men safe home again. They had driven Old Boney from England’s shore, and Frederick Wentworth could say the name Anne without flinching.

(Once he had said it with exultation, with sweet caress, with the secure hope of a bright future. Once he had said it with a girl in his arms, her hair soft upon his shoulder, her eyes shining clearer than moonlight reflecting on the ocean. Once he had sung her name to the tune of a popular ballad – or attempted to sing, for truly he had no sense of pitch – and she had laughed and laughed, more melodic in her joy than he had been in his song.)

_Anne._

(“Anne,” he had said, and kissed her. “Anne,” he had said, and twirled her under his arm. “Anne,” he had said, and dreamed of a future where it was him and her against the world, sailing forever to their far horizon.)

Anne could not be married, if in all her sweet clumsy innocence Sophia was attempting to throw them together again. She must be a spinster still, quietly fading away in the shadows of Kellynch Hall. Sophia had always been softhearted, for all her bluff open manner.

But no! Kellynch Hall was Sophia’s, and therefore Anne could not reign within. He could not fathom how the change could have come to pass. He would have sworn a solemn oath that Anne’s father would die before he lost his consequence, and to let Kellynch Hall – to _let_ it, to a _sailor_ – seemed beyond belief. Yet there it was! Sophia’s hand, in black blunt letters, Kellynch Hall.

(“Frederick,” Anne had said, her voice as shy as her kisses, but as full of love. She had loved him then, whatever she might feel now. Whatever folly had driven her to be persuaded to sever their engagement, whatever weakness she had shown in agreeing to give him up, he knew this beyond the shadow of a doubt: she had loved him. He had seen her heart, and knew it was his.)

Perhaps he should make the journey. It would be entirely a matter of reuniting himself with a beloved elder sister, Frederick told himself. They had little enough family left after the early death of their parents, despite Edward’s attempts to bountifully provide nieces and nephews for him and Sophia. If in the course of their reunion, he should happen to discover what had befallen the proud Elliots, that would be merely a side engagement. He need never see Anne, wherever her family had decamped; after all, he told himself, she would only be a shadow of her early bloom, the ghost of springtime past, the flotsam of a stronger tide. He had moved beyond her.

Even in so plotting his voyage, he lied to himself.

For after all these years, it was as simple as this: he loved her.

~*~

“Did you know?” Anne asked him, lying in his arms, his wife at last.

Frederick kissed her shoulder, full content. “Know what, love?”

She blushed, for his fingers had learned great wonders in the East, and he knew how to please a wife. He could keep a conversation and bring roses to her cheeks, just as a man could row and sing; now he applied himself to both.

Her breath came the shorter, but she did not surrender. “When Sophia came to Kellynch, and you decided to visit her. Did you know then that you still loved me?”

“Some part of my heart has always known,” he admitted, kissing the spot under her ear that made her jump and shiver. “I pretended that my heartbreak was past and mended, but that was a lie; and I think I even knew that it was a lie. You wrote your name on my heart, and it has never faded.”

She was silent a moment longer, her breath coming faster. “I cannot quite believe that save for your sister’s interference, you might never have come to Kellynch again, and we might never have seen one another. Now that you are with me, it feels as if it was always ordained so, that we were written in the stars – and yet I know full well how many years I thought you lost forever.”

Too much talking for a bride. He ducked his head to her breast, and smiled when she moaned. His Anne, shy in public, but unabashed in his bed. His Anne.

“Now you are mine,” he said. “We shall sail true north together, for the rest of our lives.”

“Frederick,” Anne said, and curled her fingers in his hair, “enough talking.”

Full of joy, Frederick complied.

~*~


End file.
